Jud Jud out of the blue

There are songs in your life that exist not just as an audio memory, but a spatial memory. Music so arresting that it’s not just the notes you remember, but the place where you heard it, the people you were with, the layout of the room or car or wherever you were at the time.

There are a few that come to mind immediately. “Waving My Dick in the Wind” by Ween—in an Oldsmobile with Tom and Dayvo, heading east on I-74, en route to Chicago, 1999. “Golden Age” by Beck, heading north out of Mojave, May 2005. “Karate” by Tenacious D after being pulled over for speeding in Yellowstone (but being released because the temporary construction speed limit sign had blown over).

(Side note: damn near everything is a spatial memory for me. I don’t know how it works for you, but so many memories in my brain are geotagged and full of x,y,z orientation. I did not ask for this.)

Jud Jud. At Seb and Leia’s. Pre-kid(s?), post-dog. It’s all right there.

And hearing it again seven or eight years later brings back the same reaction: a half minute of curiosity (unique and original, no?), followed by the fifteen-minutes-into-a-shaggy-dog-story feeling of I’ve-just-been-suckered-into-a-joke-now-haven’t-I?, followed by a kind of weird respect for anyone that could take on a project like that earnestly.